The goal of any online, direct-marketing campaign is to get a qualified prospect to your website and then have them take the action or actions you want. How you get only the best qualified visitors to see and click on your ad is what your AdWords campaign does. What convinces the visitor to take the action you want, is the job of your website, but mostly your landing page.

AdWords is about what happens before the click and landing page design is about what happens after the click. Both are equally important if you are to have a successful campaign. Traffic and conversions are 2/3 of the tactical triangle I talk about in my post titled PPC essentials.

Have you ever heard the saying “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink”? Well, even a “perfect” AdWords campaign cannot convince the visitor to take action! Yet most advertisers I work with judge the success of their AdWords campaign based on visitors taking action!

How you design your landing page to improve Google’s quality score, is the topic of my article titled AdWords optimized website design. The importance of and reasons for having landing pages specifically designed for visitors from search engines, is the topic of my article titled Landing page optimization. The purpose of this article is to help you design custom landing pages so they encourage visitors from search to stay on your website longer and take the actions you want.

Most advertisers I work with, from very small start-ups to large corporations, simply take for granted that their website and landing pages:

are not a major factor in determining the success of their AdWords campaign,

do not need to be customized for visitors from search,

do not need to be customized based on what the visitor was searching for.

This is because they don’t understand how AdWords works and the mindset of visitors from search engines.

When it comes to visitors from search engines, you need to assume they know nothing about you, your product or your business, and therefore, it’s important to realize, they are essentially “surfing the web”, perhaps not knowing exactly what they are looking for and maybe not totally focused on what they are doing.

Visitors from search do not read web pages, they scan them. So we need a way to quickly capture their attention and then pull them through a process that causes them to take the actions you want. How we do that, is captured in the formula known as A.I.D.A., which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

Visitors from search engines have very little patience. From the time they click on your ad and hit your landing page, you have 3-5 seconds to make a connection. If you don’t, they will bounce. Meaning they will leave your website and probably won’t be back! But you will have still paid the price of a click for that visit, which only lasted a few seconds. Therefore, let’s first focus on how to get their Attention.

When users are surfing the web, they are in “scanning mode” so in order to get their attention, we first need to convince them they have come to the right place. We need to convey as much relevant information in as little time as possible. And the way to do that is to have a bold headline, preferably your “h1 tag”, that is the same as:

What they searched for,

the keyword in your AdWords ad group and

in the headline of your ad copy.

This mostly satisfies the Google bot that’s responsible for determining landing page quality score, that in turn determines what you end up paying per click. But it also sends a powerful message to the visitor that they are probably on the right track.

Next you need to reaffirm this as quickly and efficiently as possible using graphic images. Let’s use my own website and landing page as an example. The most popular and relevant search term for my business is Google AdWords consultant. This is my custom landing page that is tailored to that visitor.

I am of the opinion that one of my biggest competitive differentiators is that it’s just me and I’m a real person, so within a split second of hitting my landing page, you see a headline that says “Google AdWords consulting”, a photo of me and the Google AdWords Partner badge. This fulfills the Attention part of A.I.D.A.

Now I need to generate Interest by conveying more information, but realizing the visitor is still in “scan mode”. So I use short statements, with a lot of open space, that make a bold, relevant statement. The feature I particularly like is called a slider. This is actually a WordPress plug-in. The way it works is I have a short, compelling statement or question in bold type, that is easy to read. If you click on the + symbol or anywhere on the text, it expands with more information. This allows me to have less text on the page, with easy access to more information if the visitor is interested.

Once they click on one of the bullet points (slider), they have gone from being a “visitor” to becoming a prospect. Now it’s time to rely on the small type to create Desire. But it shouldn’t be all hype. It needs to further qualify the prospect and inform them as to what they can expect if they continue further into the website or decide to use my services.

Now it’s time for Action! The action or actions you present are unique to your business and your product or service. In my case, the ultimate action I want is for the prospect to pick up the phone and call me or send me a message using the form on my Contact page. But in most cases, that’s too big of a leap for a visitor from search to take within 30 days. They aren’t ready. I need to build more rapport or establish more credibility. That’s why I present a wealth of information in the form of blog posts like this one, which pull them further into my website and establishes further credibility.

Also notice that when they are at the point of taking action, I remind them of my AdWords certification and build trust by displaying my Better Business Bureau seal and PayPal verification. In addition, I have a footer containing links to other pages and blog posts that appeal to a wide range of interests and backgrounds.

So there you have it. A real live example of one of the most respected formulas for converting visitors into prospects and convincing them to take Action!

Will the A.I.D.A. formula work on your website? Perhaps, but please don’t expect that it will be a simple task you can delegate or outsource. It’s a process that takes considerable time and testing. The example I used for my own website took me years to design, develop, implement, test and fine-tune before arriving at what I have now. Also, remember, if you decide to ask for my help, I’m not a web developer or a graphics designer. Although I often work with client’s web developers to implement custom landing pages that employ the A.I.D.A. formula.

In this post I’ll be discussing the importance of conversion tracking and the options you have when your most desired response is a phone call from the prospect.

Direct-response marketing has been around for over 100 years, since the early days of catalog sales. Pre-internet, direct-response marketers were at the mercy of the postal system and the placement of “inquiry cards” appearing in catalogs or magazines. The cycle time for feedback on things such as ad copy, graphics or an item’s popularity was measured in months.

Conversion tracking is arguably the single most important feature of search engine marketing, simply because of how much it reduces the time it takes to receive feedback on many important aspects of the search engine marketing selling process; keywords, search terms, ad copy, landing pages, website features and functions, etc.

Most novice AdWords advertisers view conversion tracking as a nifty feature or simply a scorecard that provides interesting data and not as a valuable tool for optimizing campaign performance. If you aren’t willing to make conversion tracking a top priority, then you aren’t serious about optimizing your AdWords account! If you hire a professional to manage your AdWords account and you don’t have accurate, reliable conversion tracking in place, you have significantly hampered their ability to make significant improvements in your AdWords campaign.

But what if the most desired response from your website and the action most prospects take to your AdWords campaign is a phone call? Well then we have some real challenges.

Small business advertisers with limited budgets often judge the success of their AdWords campaign and the value of my work, by the number of qualified prospects that call them on the phone. In most cases, their evaluation time horizon is about one month, but sometimes it’s as short as a few days. This is a real challenge for me as well as the advertiser, to maximize their ROI.

Here is the typical scenario. A visitor clicks on your ad, visits your landing page, maybe a few other pages on your website and then decides to call you using the phone number posted on your website. The challenge we have is that the phone call cannot be traced back to the most important variables that make up your AdWords campaign; search queries, keywords, ad copy and landing pages. Simply asking the prospect how they found you and them saying Google or the internet, is not helpful from an AdWords account management perspective.

It reminds me of something my old employer Bill Hewlett said, “You can’t improve what you can’t measure”. He was of course the co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard Company, the world renowned electronic test & measurement company and by most considered to be the birthplace of what is now known as Silicon Valley.

When you are unable to associate the key elements of AdWords to the most desired action on your website, your ROI will suffer. Then it becomes a question of what your options are and how much are you willing to do?

I often encounter situations where a client or prospect has noticed an increase in calls due to their AdWords campaign, which is what they want of course, but they are concerned about costs. When I look at their campaign, what I see are mostly broad-matched keywords. When I analyze the search terms, I see a lot of what appears to be poor quality visitors, based on the search query that was used. The challenge is, we have no way of tying a search query or keyword to a phone call. Therefore, if I modify the existing campaign or build a new campaign based on what I believe are poor quality visitors, I’m sure to be filtering some prospects who would have called. The question is, how many good prospects called and how much did the advertiser have to pay to get that call.

In order to know what search queries or negative keywords to use, we need the ability to tie a search query to a phone call so we know what is working and what isn’t. You can’t rely on users to be all that precise when they use search engines. Sometimes they search for one thing, when they are really looking for something quite different or much more specific.

For example, suppose you only sold “tankless water heaters”. Do you want your ad to display to users searching for just “water heaters” or “tankless water heater repairs”? I actually had a client in that situation. When I told him he had paid for a lot of visitors (clicks) for that search query and asked him if he wanted to pay for clicks from these users in the future, his response was, “did they call me?”. Obviously I couldn’t tell him because we were not tracking phone calls, which is where 95% of his conversions (orders) came from.

So if you find yourself in a similar situation and you are not prepared to make an additional investment in third party tools, what are your options? Here are a few ideas to consider:

Filter what you believe to be poor quality visitors and know that some valid prospects will be missed.

If your budget will permit, use broad keywords to maximize exposure, but know that there will be a lot of poor quality visitors and your ROI will suffer.

If you can’t track the call to a keyword, at least be able to track the visitor through your website using Google Analytics. Identify a multi-step (clicks or pages) that are a natural path through the website that a qualified prospect would follow. Then use Google Analytics to record metrics such as bounce rate, number of pages visited, time on the website, etc.

Here is an example of how I do that. I have a vacation home I advertise exclusively on the internet. You can’t book my home from my website, although you can fill out an inquiry form. However, most interested prospects call me. I simply can’t get enough data based on successful completion of inquiry forms to optimize my AdWords campaign. So here is what I do.

I believe when a prospect comes to my website, first they look at pictures on the landing page. If they like what they see, they may go to the photo gallery. If they are still interested, they will check out my rate schedule and specials. If they’re still interested, they will check the availability calendar. That’s where I have my AdWords conversion tracking code! If they have made it to the availability calendar, I believe they are a qualified prospect and I can track that action all the way back to the search query, keyword, ad copy and landing page. I can check the bounce rate, pages visited and time on the website.

Let’s return to the scenario where most (>50%) of your leads or sales come from telephone calls and you can’t get enough relevant information from AdWords or Google Analytics. In that case, here are some options:

Implement meticulous phone answering practices to determine exactly how the caller found your phone number; not simply “the internet”, but a “Google search” and what specifically they were searching for.

Have a dedicated phone number that is only used on your website. The degree to which this can help depends on what percentage of visitors to your website come from your AdWords account verses other referrers such as organic search, email marketing, etc.

Use Google AdWords Call Extensions. There are a few different ways to implement this.

1.) Use Click-to-Call on ads appearing on mobile devices.

2.) Use Forwarding numbers to generate a unique number that appears below your ad. But please note, this number only appears in your ad, it won’t be displayed on your website, which is where I believe it really matters. I personally believe few people actually call a phone number that appears in an ad without first visiting the website, unless they are using a mobile device.

Implement a third-party tool that can actually track a phone call back to your AdWords campaign search query, keyword and ad copy. In fact, some even record the phone call so you can confirm the real quality of the call! These tools do exist and they are usually priced as a monthly service based on the total number of unique visitors to your website per day. One product I suggest you look at is Call Tracking Metrics.

In summary, if the most desired response from your website is a phone call from a prospect and you can’t rely on AdWords or Analytics data, you either have to invest somewhere (website functionality, procedures, technology) or be prepare to go flying blind and hope for the best.

When it comes to using Google search, meaning Google.com and their search partners, including search engines like AOL.com and ASK.com, Google is focused on one thing, creating the best experience possible so users will prefer their search engine over all others. To accomplish this, they build their algorithms to reward advertisers for one thing, relevance. How relevant is your keyword, ad copy, landing page and website to what the user is searching for? I discuss this in more detail in my article titled A chain of success.

When advertisers play by Google’s rules, meaning they build their AdWords campaigns and websites according to Google AdWords best practices, they are rewarded with things like; higher ad ranking, lower CPCs and more ad exposure. Google calls this Impression Share.

But what if there were relatively few searches for what you offer or if the best keyword for you (personal injury attorney) is extremely expensive? You might feel that if users saw your ad, even when searching for something else, there is a good chance they will be interested? Then what you are trying to do is known as interruption marketing or branding, which is quite different from direct-response search engine advertising, which by the way is the generic definition of Google AdWords search.

If that is the case, then what you are trying to accomplish runs completely counter to how Google search (organic or paid) is designed to work and you have some real challenges ahead of you. Just as an aside, interruption marketing is precisely what the Google display network is all about, but that’s a topic for another day. See my post titled Display network advertising.

Let me provide a quick example. You sell car insurance. This is a fiercely competitive market and in order to maintain a Cost-Per-Click you can afford, you want to advertise for related searches that are less costly, but still relevant to car insurance buyers. You know users are searching for a “Chevy Tahoe”, but you hope that when they see your ad for “Great deals on car insurance”, they will click on your ad, go to your website and request a quote for auto insurance. We call that a conversion.

The first step in this process is to create campaigns and optimize them according to Google’s best practices for the terms that you feel are most relevant to what you offer. In the example above, this would be for “car insurance”. This means creating campaigns and fine-tuning them to achieve a sustainable CPA (Cost-Per-Acquisition) that you want. How you do this is basically how you master AdWords. When you do this, you will be taking the competition head-on. Not a trivial task for sure. This is basically what I do for clients every day.

Another quick sidebar, whether we are talking about the traditional way of building AdWords search campaigns or the non-traditional way I’ll be explaining, there is one important common thread. You must have accurate and reliable conversion tracking. Your ability to optimize your campaign will be directly related to how well you link a conversion back to the things you can control; keywords, matching options, ad copy, landing pages and website content. If you can’t do that, you are leaving a lot to chance. You are essentially flying blind and that’s not good.

In order to appreciate what I’m about to explain, you need to understand how Google has evolved over the past few years, since they went public and became accountable to Wall Street. Once they became a public company, they were expected to continually increase revenue and profits. By the way, Google AdWords accounts for 95% of Google’s profits. Google needed a way to drive up revenue, meaning click charges, in an equitable way. The method they used was to create a Quality Score. I call it Google’s profit dial because a relatively minor adjustment to the quality score algorithm can generate huge additional profits for Google.

Quality score is the part of Google’s algorithm that determines if your ad gets shown, when, where and how much a click costs you. The quality score has over 100 elements to it and Google is intentionally vague about how it works. It’s their secret sauce.

There simply isn’t any way around it. When it comes to Google search, you are bound by Google’s rules. If you are attempting to trick Google or the user, the best you can hope for is to simply stay in the game and get your ad shown as often as possible to qualified prospects who will be intrigued enough to click on your ad and convert. Staying in the game requires that you achieve a minimum level of performance for quality score, at least a score of 1. Anything higher is even better. A score of 0 and your ad does not see the light of day.

The degree to which you are able to obtain a higher quality score will determine how much impression share you receive and what your minimum bid must be. But there is a delicate balancing act required. You must maintain enough relevance in your ad copy and landing page to achieve minimum levels of quality, while at the same time being clear about what you offer. Relevance will determine how often your ad is displayed. The amount of competition will determine the keyword’s first page bid price and how truthful you are in the ad copy will have a major impact on your conversion rate.

The SNIM plan

Strategy – Display ads to users searching for related products or services, but not what you actually offer. Interrupt their search process with a related offer they can’t refuse. However, your ad must be relevant to what they are searching for.

Objective – Get as much impression share as you can, at the lowest CPC possible, but make sure the user is qualified. Quality score needs to be at least 3 and CTR is not critically important. However, a higher QS and CTR will produce better results.

Tactics

With just a few exceptions, the process for building campaigns for Search Network Interruption Marketing (SNIM) will be pretty much the same as it is for the search terms you want to compete head-on for. Meaning the search terms you want to get as close to 100% impression share, the highest quality scores and the best CTRs.

For the purpose of SNIM, the more keywords you have, the more exposure you get, and this is a game of exposure, but only at the right price.

Conversion tracking or some other similar tool that manages the campaign to CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) targets will significantly reduce the level of on-going effort.

Build and test ad groups to achieve the objectives mentioned above. If you plan to test Conversion Optimizer, have at least 30 days of history with as many conversions as possible. The more, the better.

Search terms – Determine what search terms you want your ad to display for. This requires a good understanding of the business, the business model, what is being offered, what makes a good or bad prospect and more. If the person setting up the campaign does not have a good understanding of this, it undermines the entire strategy.

Keywords – Use keywords and matching options that will display your ad for the desired search terms. Use negative keywords to filter poor quality visitors. Longer-tail keywords will produce less competition and higher quality scores, but be aware of what I call The keyword conundrum. Be careful of broad-matched keywords because they will trigger for “synonyms or related searches”. The more broad-matched keywords you can use, the more exposure you will get. Remember, the objective is broad exposure so the more keywords you have, the better.

Ad copy – Ad copy needs to first be relevant to the keyword and secondly be truthful about what the visitor will see when they click through. Use the keyword in the ad copy, preferably the headline and the display URL. Create ads that tell the visitor what they will find when they click on the ad. Be honest. The click does little good if the visitor doesn’t convert. This is a case where all you want is a CTR good enough to keep your ad showing at a good impression share.

Ad groups – Construct ad groups with common themes that link search terms to keywords, keywords to ad copy and ad copy to your custom landing page. Create ad groups around core words or phrases of similar value to the business. This is important because even though conversion optimizer is implemented at the campaign level, you set your CPA at the ad group level.

Campaigns – Create campaigns around groups containing keywords of similar value to your business. Use AdWords conversion tracking to optimize performance to the desired CPA targets. Campaigns with higher value traffic are worth more and you can afford to pay more for a conversion.

Landing page – use the keyword in the URL, h1 tag, headline and throughout the page.

Monitor the search queries to insure the traffic is relevant. Use negative keywords to filter poor quality traffic.

Things you need to know:

The devil is in the details. When this strategy is implemented properly it is a tedious and time-consuming process. There is a lot about what I have described that requires advanced knowledge of Google AdWords. This is not an advised course of action for the novice AdWords advertiser.

If you have an existing account that consists of many campaigns, ad groups and keywords, and is generating business, you need to be extremely careful not to do anything that can’t be easily undone or you could jeopardize the business.

If you have an existing account that is producing business and you don’t want to go through the time and expense of building and fine-tuning new campaigns, I suggest you simply focus on your search term reports and use negative keywords to filter the obviously poor quality traffic. This is far less costly to do and carries a lot less risk.

There are actually many different quality scores associated with your account. However, the only one you can see is associated with an individual keyword. If you have a preponderance of low quality scores, they will have an effect on the campaign where you are striving for higher marks. See my article titled The elephant in Google.

The AdWords Conversion Optimizer is a great tool when used properly. It uses historical conversion data to manipulate bid prices in real-time. However, when the historical data within the campaign indicates very little, if any correlation between the search query and a conversion, it makes it more difficult for CO to “learn” what works and what doesn’t. There is no guarantee CO will produce a better results than what you achieve by bidding manually.

In conclusion, I’d like to recognize that while this practice of SNIM runs counter to the fundamental intent of search advertising and Google AdWords, it is a viable advertising strategy and has produced enormous profits for advertisers who have done it successfully. But it is not to be entered into lightly. It will be a constant up-hill battle and you will remain at the mercy of Google and their ever-changing algorithms. Most noticeably, the quality score.

If you want your prospects to find your website when they use search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing, there are two ways you can make that happen. The first way is called SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and the other is called PPC (Pay-Per-Click).

The page you see immediately after you enter your search query and click the enter button is called a Search Engine Results Page or SERP. The listings at the top left are called “Ads” and the way you get your website listed there is by having a PPC advertising campaign using platforms such as Google AdWords and Bing Ads. The listing down the left side of the page, under the Ads are called “organic” or “natural” search results. The way you get your website listed here is by performing SEO.

There are pros and cons for each and a serious internet marketer will use both techniques to increase the chances of getting a prospect to visit their website. They want all the “real estate” they can on the SERP. Here are a few comparisons I think you might find interesting.

Cost

SEO – There is usually an up-front cost and then an on-going monthly cost. The cost variables have to do with the number of keywords and the amount of competition that exists for those keywords. The more competition there is for a keyword, the more work there is to perform; content creation and link building. It usually takes anywhere from 3-6 months to see the results you are looking for, meaning a first page ranking for your most important keywords.

The advantage of SEO is that once your webpage has been indexed by the search engines, you don’t pay anything when someone clicks on your listing and is taken to your website. This is particularly advantageous when you tend to get a lot of “shoppers” and relatively few conversions; i.e. a low conversion rate. Another example where SEO has an advantage is when you have a “long-tail” keyword, which gets the status of “Low search volume” in AdWords.

However, remember that it can take 3-6 months to achieve a first page ranking for your most important keywords and during those months you are still paying a monthly fee to the agency in addition to any up-front costs.

Your on-going cost is to keep your ranking or improve your ranking, as well as adding new keywords. If you don’t pay the on-going fee to maintain your rankings, your listing will begin to slip away. Here is an analogy I often use. SEO is like sitting in a boat with a hole in the bottom. As long as you keep bailing, you stay afloat. But the moment you stop bailing, you slowly sink out of sight.

I have spoken and worked with several SEO experts. Most people / agencies will not take on a new SEO client for less than $2,000 per month in fees. The point being, this investment is not to be entered into lightly. One misconception many business owners get caught in, is not understanding what keywords are actually valuable to their business and will deliver conversions. Most agencies, especially the ones who make unsolicited telemarketing calls to your business, will claim they can rank your website on the first page. Period. They won’t tell you for what keywords or they will only divulge keywords that are relatively easy to rank for. Buyer beware.

PPC – Some agencies charge an up-front fee and then a monthly maintenance fee. The monthly fee is derived from the monthly click charges (10-20%) or the number of keywords in your account or some other arbitrary amount.

This is where my business model is different than most other PPC agencies. I charge by the hour. See my article on How much will it cost for more information. With this type of a business model, it’s important to understand that most of the work that will be required to get you where you need to be, is done up front and therefore you need to be prepared for higher initial costs than you would otherwise see with a different business model, such as one that is based on ad spend.

Most companies who perform PPC management won’t tell you that if you design a PPC campaign correctly and perform the initial fine-tuning properly, it requires very little ongoing maintenance. This is one reason why I’m not a proponent of charging clients an ongoing monthly fee based on their ad spend or number of keywords. I do not want to be motivated by you having to spend more money. I want to be motivated by results and you being pleased with my work. And if for some reason, our efforts get sidelined due to unforeseen circumstances, you shouldn’t have to pay me for doing nothing. I have many clients I’ve not spoken with in over a year. During that period, they paid me nothing. Yet I was always available if they needed me.

Initial work required

SEO – There is a subtle difference in the way these two methods are performed. With SEO there is a presumption that you already know the keywords that will produce the best results. This is not necessarily a good assumption. How do you know what the best keywords for your business really are? What if the wrong keywords are chosen? You could waste a lot of time and money if you choose incorrectly! Also, the list of keywords is usually small compared with the number of keywords in a PPC campaign.

Generally speaking, the procedure for getting ranked organically has to do with two things; on-page and off-page characteristics. Ten years ago, getting ranked organically was mostly about on-page factors. Today it’s only about 10% on-page and 90% off-page. The number of keywords for a small business SEO campaign is about 5-25.

On-page refers to the content and meta data on any given page. Although meta data is becoming less important as search engines get smarter. The more content you have relating to a specific keyword phrase, the higher your rank will be for that page. Off-page refers to other websites that link to your website. The best scenario being a hypertext link with the text being the actual keyword you want to get ranked for (known as anchor-text), coming from a website that has a higher page rank (PR) than your website, and without a reciprocal link from your website back to the other website.

PPC – With PPC, determining the keywords that deliver the best performance is an inherent part of the process. Keywords that don’t perform well are deleted or have their bids reduced and keywords that produce better results are bid into higher positions.

A significant portion of the work done to build a PPC campaign is keyword research. Various tools are used to identify words and phrases prospects use to search for your products. However, if a client has an existing campaign, even if it was under-performing, it can be a virtual treasure chest of valuable information. When you consider all the different keyword matching options and the use of negative keywords, the total number of keywords in a small business PPC campaign can be a few hundred to as many as a few thousand. In my own AdWords account I have fewer than 50 keywords, but well over 5,000 negative keywords!

On-going work required

With both SEO and PPC, the ranking of your listing is determined by a computer program called an algorithm. These algorithms are always changing and these changes will affect the rank of your listing or ad. An astute account manager will be on top of these changes and adjust your campaigns accordingly.

SEO – Because the amount of work required for each keyword involves creating several paragraphs, if not several pages of content, as well as link building, there is a constant backlog of keywords to work on. In addition, one of the critical elements of the SEO ranking algorithm is the age of the content. It is critical that the agency constantly update the content associated with every keyword or the rank will begin to fall.

PPC – Once the keyword research has been done, the campaigns, ad groups and ad copy have been developed and launched, the process of what I call “fine-tuning” begins. One important misconception many business owners have is the importance of the fine-tuning process. I estimate the amount of work required to get a PPC campaign to a mature state is about 60/40% in favor of fine-tuning. The more keywords in the account, the more work will be required.

Some keywords are clearly more important than others. In addition, an astute account manager will undergo a process of ad copy split-testing. Ad copy is so significant it can make a 50% difference in the CTR for any given keyword. Generally, I will go through 3-4 rounds of split-testing for each ad group before arriving at the one that remains.

Time frame

SEO – Most agencies will tell you it will take 3-6 months to achieve a first page ranking for your best keywords. The time required to actually perform a good portion of the work may only take a few days, but you are at the mercy of the search engines indexing schedule to see a change in the ranking.

PPC – Depending on how the agency schedules their work, it should only take a few days to begin to see results once the work begins, but it varies greatly from one client to another. Depending on the implementation schedule, number of keywords and the amount of traffic, it will take additional time to bid each keyword into the appropriate ad position and uncover new negative keywords not found in the development phase.

Metrics & tracking results

How do you know if your investment in search engine marketing is paying off? What is the ROI?

SEO – There is nothing inherent in SEO that answers this question, although most agencies provide reports that show where your website ranks for specific keywords. But where is the beef? How many new leads or sales did you get for the money you spent on SEO? In order to answer that question you will need a separate application such as web analytics or a shopping cart application. Something that can tie a specific visit from a search engine visitor to a meaningful action on your website. This action is generally called a conversion. If you don’t have some mechanism to perform this function then you are doing little more than rolling the dice and hoping something good will happen.

PPC – The entire PPC campaign management exercise is devoted to measuring results and making adjustments to improve performance. All major PPC service providers include conversion tracking as a standard feature. However, it is up to the website owner to create meaningful actions visitors can take on their website and install the conversion tracking code properly. One issue I see all too often is how an advertiser has implemented conversion tracking in AdWords. They tend to use it more like a scorecard than an optimization tool. See my article titled PPC Implementation Strategies for more information.

In addition to conversion tracking, there are other useful metrics that can be used to determine how well your campaign is performing. These include things such as Click-Through-Rate (CTR) for keywords and ad copy, Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and search term quality.

Flexibility & responsiveness

SEO – There is an inherent lag time because you are at the mercy of the search engines ability to find the content on your website or on another website that links to yours. This makes it difficult to change the way your listing reads and your ability to add new keywords (products & services). This can be especially challenging if you deal in seasonal items.

PPC – Ad copy can be changed and new keywords can be introduced in a matter of minutes. Entire campaigns can be turned on and off like a light switch. Campaigns, can be set to run at any time of the day or night, and any day of the week.

Risks

Unless you are an expert in SEM yourself, you will be entrusting your on-line reputation and investment to the agency you chose. This comes with a certain amount of risk that you should be aware of.

SEO – Remember I mentioned that your ranking is determined by computer programs called algorithms? These algorithms are the search providers secret sauce and they go to great lengths to keep them a secret and to insure that ingenious individuals don’t use nefarious practices to game the system. Otherwise known as “black hat techniques“. These techniques may catapult your ranking in the short run, but if detected by the search providers, could get your website banned from future search results! Many innocent companies have awakened to find themselves out of business online because of the actions of an unscrupulous SEO consultant.

PPC – There are also rules and guidelines for creating PPC campaigns, but breaking the rules usually results in the temporary suspension of a keyword, ad group or individual ad. As with SEO, blatant failure to adhere to Google’s policies will result in account suspension and eventual banning from the AdWords program.

Perhaps the biggest risk with PPC is whether it ultimately produces a profit. Just as with SEO, you have professional fees to create and manage your account. But with PPC you have the added expense of click charges.

There is no guarantee that PPC will work for every product and every business. There must be enough profit margin in any given sale to cover the costs of your campaign, just to break even. This is where I’d like to borrow a very good model coined the Tactical Triangle, from my friend Perry Marshall. I describe it in my post titled PPC Essentials. If you have any question as to whether AdWords will work for your product or service, you must read this post.

If you are serious about knowing if it will work for you, then you need to be prepared to make a commitment to perform an adequate test. The cost to perform the test is determined by the amount of agency fees and click charges. I recommend you budget 300-500 clicks to perform an adequate test. To get a feel for the amount of consulting fees, see my article on How much will it cost.

Location targeting

This refers to your ability to include or exclude visitors to your website from search engines based on where the searcher is located.

SEO – It is not possible to geographically target your ad using SEO, unless you add a geographic qualifier in every keyword, such as “dallas widgets” versus simply “widgets”. When you optimize your website, you are optimizing for the entire country and competing with everyone else for the same keyword phrase. How many surrounding towns would you have to include if you were to geographically qualify every important keyword with every town you wanted to serve? That said, search engines, like Google.com are getting better at knowing where the user is when they search. This is becoming a bigger and bigger factor in whose ad is displayed for any given search.

PPC – If your business serves a local market, you can use campaign location targeting that is as precise as a few miles. AdWords is also smart enough that if for example you targeted your campaign to just Dallas, TX with the keyword widgets, it would also display your ad to someone in Los Angeles searching for Dallas widgets.

Compelling ad copy

I’m talking about how effective the words are that appear on the search results page. Do they create a compelling reason to click on your listing versus your competitor?

SEO – The search results from an organic search (the results that are produced from SEO) often contain text which is sub-optimal from a marketing perspective, unless you have a very competent SEO person. Searchers often see sentence fragments with less than compelling text. The listing is typically a portion of your meta “description tag”.

PPC – With PPC the advertiser has a great deal of flexibility with the ad copy. It can be tested, tracked and modified in a matter of minutes to improve performance.

Ranking

SEO – SEO firms always talk about being “on the first page” and most search results pages have 5-10 organic listings. Agencies will feel as though they have been successful even if your listing is at the bottom of the page, “below the fold”, meaning the searcher is required to scroll down to see the listing.

Ninety percent of searchers don’t look beyond the first page and 60% don’t even scroll down the page. The idea of being in the top three positions is usually very difficult for popular keywords.

PPC – The whole process around PPC is based on maximizing ROI (Return On Investment), so given that ad ranking has a lot to do with the cost per click (CPC), ad rank is very important and unique to each keyword.

For my own PPC campaign, I have some keywords I want to rank in position two or three and others I want to appear in position five or six. When you pay by the click, you look at every keyword as if it were an employee. Some employees are more valuable to your business and therefore you pay them more.

Modifications to your website

This refers to the need to actually modify your existing website to improve the campaign performance.

SEO – Earlier I described the initial work required to perform SEO. A big part of performing SEO has to do with modifying and creating new content. Therefore, you will need to give the SEO firm access to your website. One classic challenge you face with SEO is that the copy that the search engines like doesn’t usually appeal to prospects. It just doesn’t sound natural or provide compelling sales copy.

PPC – No website modifications are necessary to have a PPC campaign. However, that’s not to say that your campaign can’t be improved by making website modifications. One of the important elements of the quality score algorithm is landing page quality. Landing page quality has to do with the relevance between the keyword, ad copy and the content of the landing page. For example, if your keyword is “apples”, then Google wants to see the word apples in your ad and content on your landing page that’s all about apples and not oranges or fruit.

Building a successful PPC campaign is an on-going process. In almost every case I get to the point with a client where the biggest inhibitor is the website. It might be that it needs customized landing pages that are highly relevant to the keyword and ad copy or the website needs a facelift because it doesn’t sell as effectively as it could. However, these are the very same characteristics that would affect the performance of an SEO campaign.

Market conditions and cost

In some markets it’s very difficult to differentiate yourself in an ad or description line. The result is that users tend to do a lot of shopping, meaning they scan many websites before digging deeper and often return to a site several times during the evaluation phase.

SEO – This has an advantage for SEO because the advertiser is not paying per click. The visitor can click on the listing till their heart’s content and it has no financial consequence to the advertiser. See my article titled The ascension model.

PPC – When the advertiser pays per click, you want a visitor to click on your ad only once and never leave. This is why it’s always a good idea to have a prominent “Bookmark this page” button on your most popular pages.

Search Engine Marketing is extremely powerful and cost effective when done right, and Pay-Per-Click SEM is one of the fastest and most targeted forms of direct response marketing available today. In addition, it has a significant advantage over other forms of direct marketing in its ability to get almost instantaneous feedback, and in the world of direct marketing, feedback and testing are crucial.

I have always liked the expression “the more you know, the more you don’t know” and that was never more true than when it comes to PPC. If you have ever looked into direct marketing, you know that it quickly becomes a sea of books, tapes, e-zines, videos, newsletters, seminars, software tools and web sites that are nothing more than online shopping centers designed to string you along through a series of $50 to as much as $1,000 purchases as you become spoon fed on the basic concepts and intricate details.

How do I know this? Because I have done it and so has anyone else who understands this topic. That’s how you learn it. By design, the search engines don’t publish any comprehensive manuals on how the technology works. There are several reasons for this, but here are a few:

They make more money when you waste money trying to figure it out.

How they implement the search engines is their “secret sauce”, their differentiation.

It is always changing.

You can’t afford to become an expert at search engine marketing, direct response advertising, public relations, ad copy writing, web site design, and a whole myriad of other internet technologies. You just want more qualified sales leads that will result in new business! You want someone to help you determine if search engine marketing is right for you and do it quickly without having to make a large up-front expenditure or a long term commitment. But if it does show promise, then you need to take full advantage of it by choosing the mechanisms that best fit your situation and then connect them in a seamless way with your selling process. After all, the purpose of most forms of marketing is to take the prospect as close as possible to your in-person selling.

The balance of using “media” with “in-person selling” will be unique to each industry, every company and even individual products. That’s why you need to consider a variety of marketing mechanisms that will work together to produce qualified leads.

My approach is to work with you to determine if this type of advertising is right for your business, and if so, together we will customize it, leverage it, test it to insure it is delivering the desired results, then integrate it into your sales process, and I won’t leave you stranded along the way. As a career sales and marketing person, as well as a degreed engineer, I have the ability to help you beyond AdWords.

In many ways, the ability to create the optimal PPC campaign is based on factors you may not have been thinking about. Most notably is your website design, but other factors include:

How competitive your market is, relative to your budget.

How your most important keywords have performed across the entire Google system. Yes, your competitors performance for those same keywords is a major component. This has a significant impact on your keyword quality scores and quality score is the biggest factor in determining what you pay per click.

Local advertisers with smaller markets and less traffic, find it difficult to break through the system-wide quality scores.

Your larger competitors with deeper pockets can afford to spend more and take a longer-term view.

The lifetime value of a customer will determine how much you can afford to pay to acquire a new customer.

What is the action you want your “visitor from search” to take? Is it a lead or a sign-up that doesn’t require anything more than a first name and email address or is it a $300 sale?

Do you have actions visitors can take within the next 30 days, which we can tract, that indicate you are connecting with visitors? If you don’t, you will find it difficult to know what keywords and ad copy are working and which aren’t.

These and other factors will play a large part in achieving your goals, yet they are beyond what a campaign manager can control.

But let’s focus on your website because it’s so important.

In an ideal world, you would build your website with the visitor from search in mind and optimize your website, especially your landing pages, specifically for that type of visitor. You would begin by understanding what I call the “search vocabulary” of your niche markets. These are the words and phrases prospects use when they shop for products and services using search engines. Google calls them search terms or search queries. Not to be confused with keywords. And they might very well be terms you wouldn’t have thought of and don’t appear anywhere on your current website.

Visitors from search are a unique kind of prospect. They tend to be cynical, skeptical and have very little patience. From the moment they arrive at your landing page, you have 3-5 seconds to make a connection with them. If you don’t, they will “bounce” and probably will not be coming back. How you create landing pages that are optimized for visitors from search, is called conversion optimization. Examples of actions that can be tracked in AdWords are discussed further down this page.

But let’s focus on the search vocabulary and how it relates to your website design. To do this I need to introduce you to a new term called the “search continuum”. It refers to how users search for products and services as they move through the phases of seeking information to shopping and then ultimately buying. Ideally, you want to pay for one click from any given visitor and then they buy from you. Unfortunately, it seldom works that way, especially with search marketing where you have no previous established relationship with the prospect.

Unless you are willing to make a considerable investment in a website make-over, having the right AdWords strategy has a lot to do with how your website is designed. I’d like to provide a generic example to make the point.

The information seeker who is early in the search continuum, uses generic search queries such as “wagons”. At this point, they want to know what they look like, how they are used and perhaps ball park pricing.

The shopper uses search queries that are a bit more refined, such as “wagons for kids”. This user wants to know who makes wagons for kids, what are they made of, what specific products are available and some comparison shopping information, preferably from multiple manufacturers and distributors.

The buyer users search queries such as “American Flyer AF-2307”. This prospect is very close to purchasing and will be more interested in price, availability, shipping costs and service after the sale.

Each of these three scenarios imply very different conversations with your prospect and therefore very different landing pages and website content. If your website is very product oriented, with pages of detailed specifications and you only represent one supplier, then you shouldn’t be using keywords indicative of the information seeker and perhaps not even the shopper. If you do, you may wind up turning off the visitor or at a minimum, paying for that visitor to click on your ad several times as they move through the search continuum. Your focus should be on prospects much further in the search continuum who are very close to making a purchase.

For another perspective on this same basic issue, read my article titled PPC essentials.

The degree to which a PPC campaign is implemented will be dependent on several factors, which may or may not be economically or technically feasible for your company. Certain aspects of the campaign management will be performed based on the level of experience and tools the campaign manager has at their disposal. However, in many cases, especially for companies who only have a basic website and a minimal budget for internet marketing, even the best campaign manager will be limited in what they can do, especially when it comes to producing tangible results in the short run.

Successful search engine advertising is focused on one very important factor; Return on Investment (ROI) and the primary tool used to calculate ROI is called Conversion tracking. A conversion takes place when a visitor to your website is able to take some meaningful action which can be measured and monetized.

If you have no meaningful actions visitors can take that can be tied back to a specific keyword, then you need to construct your campaign and adjust your expectations accordingly. For example, if the action you are looking for from your PPC campaign is to have a prospect call you on the phone, it will take longer to know if your campaign is producing the results you are hoping for and it will be more difficult to optimize.

John Wanamaker’s famous 1886 quote sums it up very well:

“I know that 50% of my advertising is wasted…
…I just don’t know which half!”

A good campaign manager will begin with a thorough analysis of your web site to determine what, if any visitor actions can be monitored to begin the process of establishing ROI based advertising. In many cases, some important actions already exist, even if it is only the action of visiting a specific page on the site. Other actions may be able to be added without much difficulty or expense such as creating a printable coupon. The ultimate action is to have a visitor actually buy something on your site! However, that implies that your site is capable of e-commerce, which most small businesses that are not web-based, simply are not set up to do.

Here are some ideas for actions that can be tracked and used to help establish ROI:

Visiting a specific page on your site

Sign up for a mini email course

Downloading a white paper or application

Playing a video clip

Take a poll

Sign up for a newsletter

Print a coupon

Listen to an audio clip

Fill out a “contact us” form

Sign up for a conference call

Sign up to receive a series of emails on a particular topic

Submit a question

Make a call

Register / Sign-up for an event

Email to a friend

Buy something!!!!

These are all actions which indicate that you have connected with the visitor and you are beginning a relationship, and these actions can be traced back to specific keywords, search terms and ads. Now you have empirical data to know what’s working!

Once you and your campaign manager have decided what your site is capable of, web analytics should to be installed. Website analytics allows the tracking of visitor movements and actions while on your site. In addition, they tell you lots of other useful information that can help fine tune your campaign for greater efficiency and improved ROI.

Suppose your friendly Yellow Pages salesperson said to you, “I’m willing to put any ad you want on as many pages as you want, and the only time you have to pay me is when someone goes to your website”.

Would you be interested in a deal like that? Well, that is what Pay-Per-Click advertising is like. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad and is delivered to your web site. And remember what the Yellow Pages salesperson said about “on as many pages as you like”? Well, today if you advertise in the Yellow Pages, you are probably under one or maybe two categories or headings. With Search Engine Marketing, you can be under as many “categories” as you feel are appropriate for your business. These are called “keywords” or “keyword phrases”.

Perhaps a question & answer forum will help…

“But I already pay someone do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make sure I am highly ranked for my keywords. ”If they are doing SEO, then here are some things to consider:

Making your website “search engine friendly” is not the same as search engine optimization. There is a really big difference.

Your SEO campaign is probably limited to a relatively small number of keywords that are applicable to your business. PPC offers an unlimited number of keywords.

What is displayed in the search results is likely a chopped up collection of words from a page on your site. It isn’t a compelling marketing message with a call to action that SELLS!

It typically takes 3-6 months for the search engines to identify any changes to your site and then “re-index” your site for the new keywords. Changing or adding keywords with PPC takes a matter of minutes.

If your serve a national market, then using SEO in conjunction with PPC is a viable strategy. However, if you are a small business serving a local market then SEO alone is limited in what it will do for you. For example, you can’t geographically target the audience unless you include the name of the city in the keyword. If you perform SEO on the keyword “real estate agent”, you are “optimizing” for the entire country and competing against everyone else who optimizes for that keyword.

If your employee or contractor is using techniques the search engines forbid, your site could get permanently banned! For many businesses, their brand, company name or web site URL, is very valuable to them and loosing the ability to be found using a search engine would have a traumatic effect on their on-line presence.

“Why can’t my IT person or web developer do this?”

I can’t count the number of times a prospect has come to me after they have let their web developer create and manage their AdWords account. In most cases the person was very good at web development and said, “sure, I know how to use AdWords”. The thing is, AdWords is deceptively simply, but devilishly complex. Almost anyone with basic computer skills can open an AdWords account and drive traffic to a website. However, doing it in a way that produces an optimal ROI is quite another thing. But for the sake of discussion, let’s assume her or she….

Has some knowledge of search engine marketing

Has some experience with Pay-Per-Click

Has extensive experience with the major search engine paid search programs and is up-to-date

Has the software tools necessary to perform the keyword research and on-going maintenance

Has done the research to know what keywords will perform well in your industry, in your industry segment and in your local area

Has the time to devote to this effort on a priority basis

Then assuming they have other duties and their time has value, you will probably be paying them more than I would charge. And if they are not at least as effective as I am, you won’t be getting a good return on your investment!

“Where will my ad appear and what will it look like?” While I work with several different “search providers”, by far the most effective is Google AdWords. If you go to www.Google.com and search for a product or service, you will be able to see in a pink shaded area on the top and down the right-hand side of the screen, a list of “Ads”. This is where your ad would appear. Try it, and see what it looks like. Google is the most popular search engine and your ad could appear for as many keywords as you would like.

Let me begin with the fundamental premise that creating any successful advertising campaign, whether it be AdWords or a magazine ad, requires testing and constant fine-tuning. No one ever gets it exactly right the first time.

Whether it be a client’s campaign or one I’m developing for them, the first implementation of an ad group provides valuable information about the market niche you are trying to penetrate. Once you reach the point where you have statistically significant data, you can develop a plan for taking it to the next level.

When the first batch of data becomes available, which could take three days or three months to gather, depending on the number of clicks you receive, you have an idea about the amount of traffic (impressions & clicks) for an individual keyword and the all-important Google AdWords quality score.

If you find yourself in a situation where you have a keyword that:

correctly describes your product or service

cannot be further specified by attaching adjectives that make it more precise without receiving the dreaded status of “Low search volume”

and still have a very low (2-4) quality score

you have a real challenge with limited options.

Most advertisers who find themselves in this predicament want to improve the quality score because:

their ad is not displaying at all (quality score of 0-1) or

their ad is receiving reduced impressions (quality score of 3-6) or

is resulting in an exorbitant CPC (quality score of 2-4).

Chances are, you find yourself in this position because Google has determined that very few, if any advertisers are able to produce a consistently good user experience for that keyword. By this I mean that the metrics Google uses to rate user experiences (CTR, bounce rate, number of pages visited, time on your website, etc.) are relatively low. And in most cases, the reason they are low is because the keyword phrase is very broad. Meaning it is used by a wide range of user interests and therefore it appeals to no one.

When this happens, the reason Google provides is that the quality score you are given for that keyword is most heavily influenced by “how well that keyword has performed throughout the Google system”. This condition can account for as much as 60% of the quality score you receive! It is the largest single component.

In this situation, there are only a few things you can do, with none of them being all that easy or inexpensive. Plus, there will be no guarantee they will make a significant impact, at least in the short-term.

If you do decide to take action, here are the steps I recommend:

Determine which keywords have sufficient search volume to warrant their own ad group.

Create separate ad groups for each one of those keywords and perform additional research to insure you have a full complement of negative keywords. This will ultimately help improve your CTR.

Insure a high degree of relevance between the keyword and the ad copy headline.

Once the new ad groups and landing pages are in place, bid to rank in the number two position.

Here is why you want your ads to appear in the “top” positions, meaning they appear over the organic search results. The CTR of a keyword when it appears in the top position can be many times more than when it appears in the right-hand column or what google calls the “other” position. To see what I mean, run a “Segment” report and chose “Top vs. Other”. You might be surprised.

The single biggest component of keyword quality score is CTR, and in this case, where your performance is being overwhelmingly influenced by “how well that keyword has performed throughout the Google system”, you must demonstrate significantly better CTR performance than the other advertisers. I believe that metric is somewhere in the range of 5% CTR or better.

If you are reading this article you have either made the decision to significantly restructure your AdWords account or you are seriously considering it.

Chances are, you are doing this because your account suffers from what I call the broad match effect. The purpose of this article is to prepare you for the journey we will be on as we transition from your current account structure to the new one.

Making any change to your AdWords account involves some degree of risk. AdWords is an extremely complex and dynamic system. If you allow me to restructure your account, there will be certain risks, but the risk is minimized because we know:

what the problem is,

what to do about it,

what the result will be and

what to expect during the transition.

I want to elaborate on this because there will be short-term setbacks and long-term ramifications. You may see some alarming performance data during the transition. Some of this performance data is real and represents actual short-term and long-term higher costs and some of it is not as real, just misleading.

The real part comes two factors; higher CPC associated with more restrictive keyword matching options and from the fact that we will be reestablishing quality scores for keywords and ad copy. Yes, ad copy has a quality score, you just can’t see it like you can for keywords, but it is real and it does have an impact on performance. Finding the balance of ad quality and optimal ad CTR is tricky business and can only be accomplished through testing. In addition, I recommend giving your Max CPC bids a boost in the early going to establish a higher CTR. As you know, the biggest component of keyword quality score is CTR.

Here is a graphic I created to illustrate how keyword matching options effect your CPC, exposure and quality of visitors.

This is a an alarming reality for some advertisers and you should be prepared to spend 50-500% more CPC when you make this Major Chance to your campaign structure!

The part which is not so obvious is your cost per conversion. Because conversion tracking uses a 30-day cookie, cost/conv data for any given keyword on any given day will change based on newly registered conversions. That’s because conversions and transactions get attributed to the date of the click (on your ad), not the date the conversion occurred.

Here is something for you to think about. If you want to know the effect a change you make today has on cost/conv, you need to wait at least sixty days and then look back thirty days. Otherwise you will be dealing with incomplete and misleading data. You need to resist evaluating the new campaign based on short-term data. Also keep in mind that the number of impressions and clicks can vary considerably from day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month. You must be willing to have the necessary confidence, commitment and patience or you should not be doing this.

Depending on your market, conversion tracking data can increase many fold over the life of the cookie, as visitors return to your site (from non-AdWords links) and convert. I make the distinction, “from non-AdWords links”, such as a bookmark, organic listing or website referrals, because AdWords attributes the conversion to the last-clicked ad, keyword and search term, even if the keyword or ad is paused.

I make the point about paused keywords because you will continue to register conversions in your account from keywords in your old campaigns, which may be paused, and you probably won’t be looking at those keywords when we launch the new campaign(s).

The broad-match wild card effect – With all the down-side of using broad-matched keywords, there is one positive aspect worth mentioning, and it can be significant.

The fact is that some search queries can only trigger ads using broad-matched keywords. Unless you have spent considerable time pouring through server logs and search term reports, you probably don’t realize just how many possible unique search queries there are for your broad-matched keywords. It’s essentially unlimited. Some of them are great and some are dogs. The dogs are why you have been racking up all those relatively poor quality impressions and clicks. But notice just how many of those strange ones produced conversions! Chances are that those strange search terms will not trigger your ad with anything other than a broad-matched keyword. If you tried to target that same search query with a more targeted keyword match type, you would almost certainly be given a status of Low search volume.

Here is something else to consider. When you use broad-matched keywords, you become eligible for a very large number of ad auctions. At the time of the ad auction, only a fraction of those eligible, actually get displayed. There are so many dynamic factors at play, that it becomes unpredictable, especially when you have an unusual search query. I call this the broad-match wildcard effect. While you might be very happy that your ad was displayed for a particular search query, it will be impossible to insure that it will be displayed the next time that search query is performed.

While we will try to create keywords and matching options that display your ad for as many relevant search queries as possible, there is only so much we can do. We don’t have complete control over the AdWords system and it isn’t 100% predictable. Therefore, if we use more restrictive keyword match types, you must be willing to accept the fact that we will not be able to display your ad for every conceivable search query. If your logs indicate that you have received a significant number of conversions from search queries that we cannot reliably link to a keyword in the new design, we should not implement a completely new design. A partial redesign, focusing on a segment of the account or campaign may be in order.

The importance of fine-tuning – Most advertisers can’t appreciate the importance of or the amount of time required to fine-tune a campaign once it’s been launched. No one ever get’s everything right when the campaign is first launched.

When the initial campaign is launched, default bid prices are used, which amount to little more than a guess as to what the bid price should be in order to receive the desired ad ranking for each keyword. It’s simply not practical to research bid prices for a large number of keywords prior to launch. In the beginning it will be necessary for me to monitor and make adjustments at least once a day and then it tails off over time. The amount of time this requires depends on the number of keywords, ad groups and campaigns in your account.

Each keyword is unique and is actually a “market” unto itself. Therefore, until the keyword is actually searched on and your ads receive “clicks”, you can’t be sure where your ad will appear in the ranking or how much you need to bid to obtain the rank that is appropriate. Some keywords are simply much more valuable to you than others. It is an iterative process and the two most important factors are 1) how much traffic your campaign receives and 2) how much time I have to work on it. Some of my clients have made a serious mistake by not allowing me to perform the fine-tuning process once the new campaign is launched or they underestimate the amount of work required to perform this important task.

Before we begin the transition, I recommend that you implement Google Analytics. It offers data you won’t see in AdWords, such as bounce rate, number of pages per visit, % new visitors and average time on site. These are all valuable pieces of data that help us establish relative values for specific keywords, ad copy and web pages. In addition, you can set up “goals”, which are like conversions. But unlike the AdWords 30-day cookie, the Google Analytics cookie can last up to two years! This can help give us a more accurate cost/conv.

So let’s review why you might want to incur the additional expense of redesigning your AdWords account and seemingly subject yourself to the risk.

The characteristics I describe in the broad match effect, implies you don’t have the desired control over what’s going on in your AdWords account. You aren’t able to control what ad a user sees for any given search query, your ads are being shown for irrelevant searches (unwanted impressions), you are paying for a lot of poor quality visitors and you are spending a lot of time making changes to your account without any real confidence you know what you are doing. You’re doing stuff like; ad copy changes, new keywords, experimenting with keyword matching options, adding a lot of negative keywords and changing bid prices. Probably not the best use of your time.

The answer is, you will get:

Better search query to ad copy relevance

Higher CTR

Higher quality scores

Lower CPC

Lower cost/conv

Fewer unwanted impressions

Higher CTR

Lower CPC

Lower cost/conv

Fewer unwanted clicks

Lower ad spend

Lower cost/conv

Easier on-going account maintenance

Lower costs

Less of your time

Better ROI

The confidence in knowing what’s actually happening

Frees you up to focus on other things

The confidence in knowing you are in control

Freedom to try new things

A happier life 🙂

One final word of caution. You have probably come to the realization that the new account design I discussed is pretty involved. Well, you’re right. Therefore, if you or anyone else make changes to the new campaign, chances are they will do more harm than good. It would be like hiring someone to tune your baby grand piano and then making a few minor adjustments on your own! Not a good idea.

One of the most important skills of a Google AdWords advertiser that separates the expert from the novice, is an acute understanding of keyword matching options. The right use of matching options can make a considerable difference in the complexity, efficiency and performance of any AdWords account.

Since I’ve been managing AdWords accounts professionally, I’ve had occasion to work with many advertisers with accounts that have been active for several years, built mostly on broad-matched keywords. This type of account exhibits some rather interesting characteristics that present some unique challenges. When I see an account that exhibits these characteristics, I can be fairly confident that:

The advertiser is displaying their ad for a very wide range of search queries, but not on a consistant basis for any given search query. A classic situation for broad-matched keywords.

Their impression share is relatively low. In other words, their ads are not being shown as often as they could be due to daily budget restrictions or ad ranking.

They are probably spending more than they want or need to spend on click charges.

They are probably seeing “Limited by budget” or very close to seeing it as they are forced to continually raise their daily budget.

The broad-matched keyword is the most powerful, and yet potentially the most dangerous of all the match types. It was designed primarily for the novice advertiser who doesn’t have the time or inclination to learn the finer points of PPC advertising. A few years ago, Google quietly re-introduced the broad-match and gave it even more reach. In some circles, they called it, “extended broad-match”. The extended part had to do with an extension that allowed ads to be shown for synonyms of the keyword.

The ability to trigger ads for synonyms is what gives the broad-match its powerful and potentially dangerous characteristics. If you want to get a sense of how broad the reach is, here are a few suggestions:

Run a search term report on broad-matched keywords in your account. You’ll probably be shocked.

Use the AdWords keyword tool and make sure to uncheck the “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms” box.

Run a keyword-to-search query report in your Google Analytics account.

Most of the time, you are going to find some pretty unexpected search queries and you’ll wish you could get the money back you spent on those poor quality visitors. In many cases, this is where your daily budget has gone.

However, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes the market niche is so unique that the broad-match works pretty well. And sometimes the advertiser understands the subtle nuances of the broad-match and keeps it in check with a healthy complement of negative keywords. But these are usually exceptions to the rule.

There are additional unintended consequence of the unchecked broad-match:

You are essentially competing with yourself, because you have multiple keywords entering the same auction.

You lose control over which of your ads displays for any given keyword or search query.

You have limited ability to prioritize visitors because the broad-matched keyword can trigger an impression for such a wide range of search queries.

Another characteristic that is common to this situation is to have campaigns that are “Limited by budget”. To see just how much they are limited, run an Impression Share report. This will show how much exposure is lost due to 1) budgeting shortfall and 2) less than optimal keyword ranking, which is essentially your quality score.

“Limited by budget” is a confirmation there is more traffic available than you are able to afford, and when you consider that some of the budget is being consumed by poor quality visitors, clearly there is an issue, because it also means your ad is not being displayed for some of your best prospects.

What you want is a way to minimize your exposure to poor quality users and maximize your exposure to good quality prospects. Furthermore, you want to have enough control so that any given search query displays the best possible ad copy.

In spite of the drawbacks of using broad-matched keywords, there is one positive aspect you need to be aware of as you consider your options. I call it Remnant keyword impressions.

Some search queries can only be triggered by broad-matched keywords. This means that if you are determined to display your ad for as many search queries as possible that might be used by a qualified prospect, you will need to use some broad-matched keywords. To appreciate this, some background is required.

In the old days, before Google went public, you could have almost unlimited keywords in your account, and as long as any given keyword received a minimum CTR of .005 (5 clicks out of 1,000 impressions) Google would display your ad when it matched that keyword. That’s now ancient history.

Today, if you have a keyword that Google determines to have Low search volume, that keyword probably will not display your ad even if someone types that exact search phrase. This has several benefits for Google and one big negative for advertisers. It forces advertisers to compete for a fewer number of keywords, which drives up CPCs, and it gives Google the freedom to display ads that maximize their profit. This is just one example of how AdWords is evolving. The challenge is that it’s making it more competitive and more costly for advertisers and more profitable for Google.

So what are the options? This is an over-simplification, but to the point:

Freeze the ad spend and live with the status quo. Essentially do nothing.

Increase your daily budget to insure you are maximizing your exposure. Essentially throw more money at the problem.

Have a robust list of negative keywords and be relentless about staying on top of it. But that won’t solve all the problems because it may not be enough to reduce ad spend to an acceptable level and still have all the desired exposure. This also won’t do anything to provide the necessary control that’s required to 1) effectively match keywords to ad copy, 2) match keywords to search queries and 3) prioritize keyword ranking based on their relative value to your business.

Create an account structure that gives you more control over who sees your ad, what keywords trigger which ad and manage how much you spend to display your ad for any given search query.

If you elect to go the route of redesigning your account, here are some things you need to be aware of.

Developing, implementing and fine-tuning a new account design is tedious, time-consuming work. The critical element of the process is keyword research. The secret to proper keyword research is having the right tools and knowing how to use them. How long it takes is a function of many factors, but tends to track with the number of products and services being promoted.

I don’t like having to create new campaigns and running them while the old campaign is still enabled because the old campaign can, and often does, compete and win against the new campaign. But sometimes it can’t be avoided. During the time when both campaigns are running we have relatively poor performance. I prefer a step-by-step approach, where we carve out specific niches and test to insure we are getting the desired results.

There will be short-term setbacks (higher costs) until the new keywords and ads build up their own history, based on critical elements, such as click-through-rate and quality score. This could take 2-3 weeks, during which time you could be paying higher Avg. CPCs. As the quality scores increase and rankings improve, we can begin to reduce the Max CPC. See my article titled The elephant in Google.

The way the existing account is structured will not match up exactly to the new design. There may be times when it’s necessary to turn off larger sections of the existing account in order to bring on new keywords and ad groups. This may result in a temporary loss of exposure to certain search queries. Also, until all elements of the existing campaign are turned off, it can continue to compete with the new campaign, which has inhalant inefficiencies.